Dopamine and Constant Stimulation Ways to Regain Focus
Your focus is a scarce asset, which is why marketers spend
billions of dollars to attract your attention. Many apps are
designed to hook you. Social media companies like YouTube,
Facebook, and Instagram know that the more time you
spend on their platforms, the more money they make
through advertising. Perhaps one of their greatest recent
discoveries is the use of notifications. How many times have
you opened an app just because a red notification pops up on
your screen? And how much time did you waste
subsequently? I wouldn’t be surprised if it ran into hundreds
of hours each year.
And, thanks to ever more sophisticated algorithms,
companies have become better at hooking us.
Amazon’s
book recommendation system is more accurate and
widespread than any system a physical bookstore could
create. Likewise, YouTube suggestions are heavily
customized. And Facebook’s customer research algorithm is
quite amazing too. As a demonstration, try the following
experiment: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/dopamine-the-pathway-to-pleasure
Visit your newsfeed, watch a couple of suggested videos on a
similar topic and see what happens. The other day I watched
a basketball video and immediately received a
recommendation to view another one, so I watched it. And
then, I watched another one, and so on.
Now, the development of sophisticated algorithms has its
pros and cons. Dopamine and constant stimulation can impair your ability
to think long term.
Dopamine and Constant Stimulation Ways to Regain Focus
On the plus side, it becomes easier to discover
content you actually want to watch. On the negative side, it
makes it easier to become stuck in a never-ending looр,
watching one video after the other. In a sense, instead of
using the internet to find information or communicate with
loved ones, the internet has become the one using you.
It does so by hijacking your focus and making you
unproductive and, as a result, restless.
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